(Pray for the next 36 days; pray for America then show your character with your vote November 6th, 2012.)
I wrote eighteen months ago that energy will be a core issue in the 2012 Election.Yes, there is division in America. If, as I believe, it is between “makers” and “takers,” then the vote is a test of character. But your view on energy is also a good character measure. Freedom comes with abundant cheap energy and control needs scarce expensive energy. While not universally true, as a rule of thumb, Republicans will be for drilling and Democrats will be for regulating.
We Americans have been endowed by our creator with an unimaginable abundance of energy riches. Technically recoverable oil in the United States is 145.5 billion barrels, and technically recoverable natural gas is 1,162.7 trillion cubic feet. Our 261 billion short tons of technically recoverable coal is only half the know deposits.
North Dakota Economic Model
The U.S. portion of the huge Bakken Formation is a mere 4 billion barrels. We are talking my home state of North Dakota here. North Dakota has been an oil state for 65 years—just middle of the pack. With technological advancements, that all changed. North Dakota is now the economic model for America.
This 12 year graph, from the American Enterprise Institute, is really a 6 year story. The last half is the North Dakota Model for America. This is exciting for America. Remember the North Dakota story is only 3% of America’s potential. We live in an age where we can actually see what thousands of men and women pursuing happiness looks like. Here are two night pictures of the economic explosion around Williston North Dakota. First the explosion (??):
Then the context:
The Heritage foundation and the Institute for Energy Research sent a team to North Dakota for an up close examination of those spectacular images. They call this three minute video summary, The North Dakota Miracle: Fracking in the Bakken. I pulled two quotes:
“Hard working people is what made this country great and North Dakota’s full of them.”
“The thing we worry the most about is regulation.”
You should now be prepared for your test. Pray the rest of America prepares as well.
The Patriot's Trumpet 
You forgot to mention what the source of light was in North Dakota. It’s the wasteful flairing of natural gas because oil companies are to greedy to wait until the infrastructure is in place to handle the gas. (http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2012/0713/Thanks-to-North-Dakota-US-waste-of-natural-gas-grows-rapidly). Wasting natural resources for future generations and stepping up man made climate change for our children is probably not what Thomas Paine had in mind.